Learn Music and Audio Production | iZotope Tips and Tutorials
Removing Plosives from a Voice Recording
Description:
Plosives are strong blasts of air that create a massive pressure change at the microphone's diaphragm, and happen most often with strong p, t, k, and b sounds. RX can intelligently remove these from your audio using the De-plosive module.
Sample:
In this voiceover track, we can hear the pronounced p and b sounds.
Before RX:

After RX:

Steps in RX Audio Editor:
- Open the audio file in the RX Audio Editor or send it via RX Connect.
- Select the area where plosives occur and open the De-plosive module.
- Choose one of the presets. For this example we will start with Moderate Reduction.
- In order to keep the dialogue sounding natural, we want to make sure the most important elements of the voice is preserved when a plosive suddenly occurs. We’ll begin with the following settings:
Sensitivity = 4.0
Strength = 6.0
Frequency limit = 260 Hz
- Click Preview to listen to the processing before it is applied to your audio.
- To apply, click Process.
Tips:
- Make small adjustments. There are just three parameters in the De-plosive module:
Sensitivity: which determines what will trigger the plosive removal.
Frequency Limit: which will determine the highest frequency removed by the tool.
Strength: which will decide how extreme the removal should be.
- Use a windscreen. The simplest solution to plosives is to use a windscreen or pop filter when recording. You can also try setting the microphone slightly off-axis so that the bursts of air don't go directly into the diaphragm.
- Switch into Extended Log. Right-click on the Frequency Ruler to adjust the frequency scale to Extended Log so you can easily visualize low frequencies and make precise selections in that area.
- Try Spectral Repair. For stubborn problems, try using the Spectral Repair Replace tool to process just the frequency area where the plosive occurs.